Metabolomic Analysis of Exhaled Breath Condensate in Asthmatics

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory airway disease. Significant heterogeneity exists in the clinical manifestations and treatment responses in these patients. Metabolomics is a large-scale approach to monitoring as many as possible of the compounds involved in cellular processes in a single assay to derive metabolic profiles. Compared with genomics or proteomics, metabolomics reflects changes in phenotype and therefore function. Up to now, few studies have evaluated the role of metabolomic analysis in the diagnosis and prognostic evaluation of airway disorders. Collection of exhaled breath condensate (EBC) is a newly developed, noninvasive method that may allow clinicians and researchers to assess biochemical profiles in the alveolar lining fluid. This study will apply metabolomics to examine the biomarkers in the EBCs, serum and urine specimens in adult asthmatics.